Cosmetics are often used to highlight and enhance a person's natural beauty. Various trends in fashion encourage the use of a variety of beauty enhancing products and practices. The use of makeup is one such practice commonly engaged in for the purpose of maintaining a healthy, vibrant and youthful appearance. An assortment of makeup products to be applied to the face and hair are sold worldwide, these include lipstick, rouge, eye shadow, mascara, facial powders, creams, shampoos, conditioners and the like, all of which are makeup and/or cosmetic items well known in the art.
Most of the products currently sold as cosmetics have only a temporary effect. They are meant to be applied and then washed off at a later time. Accordingly, although they are useful in improving the appearance, their effectiveness is severely limited by the short duration of their use. Another limitation is that the addition of a cosmetic, if not applied properly, can give a user an unnatural and/or artificial appearance. Current trends in fashion promote a more natural, as opposed to an artificial, appearance. As a result, appearance enhancing products that are designed to promote the body's natural ability to replenish and appear healthier are highly sought after.
One trend currently being followed is to enhance the appearance of the eye-lashes and eye-brows. It is commonly thought that having eyelashes that appear thicker, longer and give a more voluminous feeling to the eyelashes is aesthetically pleasing. Accordingly, eye care products, such as eyeliners and mascaras, are being marketed for their abilities to give a thicker and longer appearance to the eyelashes and a more voluminous appearance to the eyebrows. However, in order to achieve these effects many mascara products typically incorporate high levels of waxes and film forming polymers into the formulation. This generally makes the washing of the mascara off the eyelashes difficult, which in turn can cause damage to the actual eyelashes. Attempts to solve this problem by use of thin moisturizing mascaras have been unsuccessful as such products are usually not thickening or lengthening in effect and do not wear well because they smudge and smear easily.
Other attempts to give the eyelashes a thicker, longer and more voluminous appearance without the problems associated with mascara (e.g., smudging and smearing) include the use of “false eyelashes” as a cosmetic accessory. False eyelash systems and devices, however, are difficult to use, hard to remove and may give the user an artificial, prefabricated look and feel.
There is, therefore, an interest in developing cosmetic compositions that provide a more natural, healthy and vibrant appearance of the eyelashes and eyebrows that are longer lasting, that do not suffer from smudging or smearing, and do not give an artificial appearance when used. The compositions and methods of the present invention meet these and other needs.